Steps to Create a Strategic Plan for Your Business

Each step a business takes is vital to success and moving forward. It’s important for a business to know a plan inside and out. Creating a strategic plan in any business requires an outline. The strategic plan will lay out the step-by-step elements including but not limited to goals, objectives, and relevancy to the company mission. If you’re looking to think more strategically in your business plans and management, here’s everything you need to outline your strategic business plan.

Vision Summary

What is the purpose of your plan? Focus on the end result and elaborate on that vision. This is where you summarize where you want the business to be at the end of this plan. You can keep this on the shorter side, writing only 1-3 sentences. For example, if you’re a startup business, your vision summary could look something like this:

(Insert Business Name Here) will be recognized by the public through a launch event. We will be open to business on (Enter Date Here) with driving sales and revenue to (Expected Revenue) by (Enter Date Here).

Creating your vision doesn’t have to be sales oriented. It can regard any goal or vision for your business. Consider this part the introduction and keep it simple as “Hello, My name is…” just like you’re meeting someone for the first time. This is the first time anyone in the company is learning this information.

Connection with Company Mission

Another brief section to your strategic plan should be connecting the plan with the business’s mission. The plan should align with what your business strives to achieve. If the vision and mission statement do not align, consider reassessing the vision to better fit company mission guidelines. Any plan going forward with a company should be in the best interest of the company and it’s mission.

GSOT

Next, you want to tell where you expect to be at the end and how you plan to get there. This will include an overview of the goals, strategies, objectives and tactics. It’s your job to explain the expected outcome, how you plan to get there, how you plan to measure it and any tools that can be utilized in the process.

This is a simple sheet that goes over the bigger details of the strategic plan. Be sure to identify both short term and long term goals. State what you want to achieve and how long you expect it to take. Then go into how your business can get on that trajectory to achieving goals that were set.

SWOT

An analysis you’ll want to implement in your strategic plan is the SWOT analysis which stands for:

Strengths

Weaknesses

Opportunities

Threats

This will help you focus on what to pursue throughout your plan. You can determine the best course of action and opportunities to chase. It also evaluates what is going well and what has room for improvement as your business develops over the course of the plan.

Timeline and Budget

Lastly, go over the timeline and budget. Make sure your plan is steady before your get to this part to save yourself from doing any extra work. Every plan needs a timeline to ensure it’s staying on track and running smoothly. If you have room for a budget in your plan, include those details in this part of your strategic plan. This is where you can prioritize the finer details of your plan.